Chicken Snippets

There is certainly an argument for partial house vs whole house brooding.

A smaller area space for starting your day-old chicks – saves on heating and energy costs.

However, depending on your brooding house set-up, the challenge becomes:

1. supplying sufficient airflow
2. locking in the heat within the chamber

…to maintain optimal comfort for your flock.

Here are some example partial brooding solutions for achieving this: [Read more…] about Partial house brooding set-up and thermodynamics

Benefits of consistent poultry production…

[Read more…] about Consistent Poultry Production

(Image source: AA Aviagen)

11 factors of poultry farming

1. 1. Chick quality: the ‘seeds’ of the entire poultry farming process. All future growth potential of the birds is derived from a combination of the genetic potential of the selected breed of chicks.
   2. Health: there’s no secret that broilers and layers are most vulnerable to health challenges as chicks. In fact, it is said that getting past the 1st 7 days is indicative of future poultry farming success.
   3. Bird welfare: once on the farm, stockmanship is the management process by which the ‘good start’ your chicks gained from the hatchery pays off in the long run.
   4. Nutrition: ensuring the birds have optimal feed composition, condition, particulate size, availability, and formulation for each stage of growth is a critical input for performance.
   5. Temperature: as chicks, poultry cannot thermoregulate. This places them at the mercy of your stockman’s environmental temperature management at their most fragile phase.
   6. Water supply: clean, cool and constant water supply – provided via an accessible system (if drip fed, under good pressure, or drinkers distributed sufficiently). Water is commonly recognised for its precursor effects in regulating appetite for feeding.
   7. Vaccination status: obtaining chicks from a reputable hatchery means they arrive on your farm site with a complete vaccination status (in accordance with best breeder practice).
   8. Ventilation: a well-ventilated poultry house is key to temperature and humidity control, as well as air quality for optimal growth performance.
   9. Stocking density: space allocation for your poultry flock is a critical factor for performance. It impacts their ability to access adequate food & water. Also, overstocking can lead to overheating, litter saturation (and associated issues like skin lesions), and high airborne ammonia levels.
   10. Lighting: a well-designed lighting programme ensures sufficient rest and activity/feeding periods during the brooding, laying, and growth stages.
   11. Feed supply: adequate, high-quality feed, specially formulated for the appropriate stage of growth or production of broilers and layers, leads to optimal performance.

Other factors

Stockmanship

Management of the above 11 factors will contribute to and compound overall performance. It’s the stockman’s responsibility to execute the optimal management plan. If managed well, the birds have the best chance of achieving their genetic potential.

Business management

Without the necessary resources (quality, quantity, and timing), none of the above is possible. So, a prudent business management style is required to ensure the inputs necessary for success are available.

With so much said about feed conversion and poultry farming profits, it could almost be forgiven that we downplay the crucial role of water intake.

Yes, whilst feed conversion is the bedrock of poultry meat or egg production – it must be remembered that there are contributors.

And for turning grains into broiler meat or layer eggs, water is the most influential contributor to the process.

Water is a powerful regulator of appetite and a crucial chemical substrate for metabolism. An essential ingredient for the thriving of all flocks.

Simple as this may sound, the practical delivery of water can present challenges that affect uptake by birds.

And if such kinks or creases are not ironed out of the rearing process, adverse outcomes in feed conversion can be witnessed.

And unless a robust approach to root cause analysis is taken, this failure in achieving genetic potential can be wrongly attributed to other factors…perhaps, feed formulation or even feed quantity.

However, the key to successful water delivery is an effective drinker system.

In poultry farming, 2 predominant drinker systems exist:

• Bell drinkers
• Nipple drinkers

Both systems have their given pros and cons – but equally, either can be deployed successfully where the prerequisite conditions for optimal use are met.

Each format of water delivery system has its own related best practices. If they are followed, this should yield optimal results and support feed conversion – for reaching the peak genetic potential.

Each drinker system requires maintenance and adjustments that mirror physiological changes in the flock.

This means you and your stockmen must be sensitive to flock changes and reactive to meet their needs.

Staying ahead of the change curve and upholding optimal water delivery, helps to keep your farm in peak performance.

In fact, aside from feed consumption, monitoring water consumption will also help you benchmark against the standard.

Water levels are a giveaway. Regular readings will show you if your flock is on target for feed conversion, or not.

Also, flock observation will indicate how easily birds are able to drink water.

Bottom line – water is a very necessary and key determinant of the feed conversion equation (although we might not think it).

How’s your flock water consumption going? And how does it line up with your flock’s feed conversion ration?

Broiler thinning involves performing a partial depopulation of the flock approximately one week prior (@ ~35 days) to the end-stage processing date ( @~42 days). There are 2 economic benefits experienced: (1) Optimisation of kg of meat per sq.ft of floor space, (2) Reaching a wider customer base by diversifying the product.

It’s a creative response to dealing with regulatory constraints x heterogeneous customer base.

As you can probably tell, I like thinning. Or rather, I like the idea of where it comes from.

As an independent business professional, this kind of thinking stimulates me. It’s the kind of innovation that is readily witnessed amongst entrepreneurial circles and contrastingly, rarely glimpsed within corporate corridors.

As entrepreneurs, we have our back up against it often. Sure, we have all to gain if things go right, but unlike having a guaranteed salary safety net, entrepreneurs also have all to lose if things go wrong.

And that kind of pressure can often extend the ingenuity of mankind into unexpected realms of remarkable problem-solving. This is the beauty of entrepreneurship…leaving yourself without excuse, and therefore, “…you just gotta make a way!”

And it’s through this lens that I stare admirably at thinning (and such like practices) that “make the most of what you do have” and find a way around the obstacle.

Here are two common problems facing broiler farmers in today’s marketplace:

1. Local authorities apply ‘hard stop’ legal limits on stocking density in broiler farming to promote animal welfare.
2. Demand for carcass weight is variable – buyers prefer varying sizes of carcasses.

At the same time, your profit margins are constantly under pressure from rising feed costs, cheaper imports etc. (…and the list goes on…)

And so, what’s a broiler farmer supposed to do?

Fold?

Or, get inventive?

Enter thinning.

Using a tunnel-ventilated poultry house environment with cooling pads? You might have a maximum stocking density of, say, 42 kg/m² (8.6 lb/ft²).

Along with this, you have cost constraints and price ceiling that demands another 15-20% profitability out of your flocks.

Thinking bigger doesn’t actually solve your problem.

You’ve got to think smarter.

Segment your customer base & your broiler flocks.

Find demand for broilers grown only to 35 days old – say 25% of your flock.

And then, with the remaining 75% of your flock meet the demand of customers wanting 42-day-old/size broilers.

This way, by head count, you pack more birds into the same space, thus raising your $/sq. ft…

…but you don’t breach regulatory limits, nor impair animal welfare – yet overall you increase profit by 10-20%.

And all without having to increase your infrastructural footprint a single inch.

The beauty of thinning. The principle for winning.

Poultry farming KPIs give you constant visibility of performance.  And poultry keywords provide leverage for results. Without KPIs our efforts become aimless and we’re prone to going off track and falling into the trap of “…doing it, just for doing it sake.” And without keywords, we get lost and become immobilised with the weight and inertia of indecision.

(How crippling this can be…)

When the fog obscurity sets in, fear to act takes hold – then all sorts of problems begin to dominate the operation. And all because we lost sight of the goal, then lost heart. And this…we cannot afford.

So, a very simple yet effective visual hack (much in the same way that blinkers on horses work to good effect) is to keep your KPIs and keywords in constant view…perhaps using a sticky note memo on your desk.

The idea being that as you administer the managerial functions within the business, your eyes and mind are continually trained on “what matters”.

And this is critical because one thing is for sure, both in life and business, “…things that don’t matter have an uncanny knack of dressing up rather well as things that do!”

Speaking of “what matters”, here’s a quick shortlist of KPIs you might want to keep close-by:

• FCR – feed conversion ratio (minimum & optimal)
• Cumulative mortality
• Milestone weights & production targets

Now, with firm numbers against these, you should also support them with qualitative keywords that help you gain cognitive leverage.

Examples might be:

• FCR < 1.9 (…feed availability & uptake, feed quality, supply chain)
• Cumulative mortality rate < 0.5% (…1st 7 days – if reared from day 1, late stage, in-transit, pattern, postmortem)
• Rejected carcasses < 0.5% -> (…handling, transport)
• Milestone weights  -> (…uniformity, root cause)

The combination of KPIs and keywords in sight will naturally keep you ‘considerate and inquisitive’ concerning the key measures and levers that support your business results. It’s kind of like setting your thoughts on tracks.

At the start of every day, revise your KPIs and keywords – adding to, highlighting or annotating the list as your private study & strategic analysis leads you to fine-tune and prioritise.

Call it a memo, cheat sheet or study notes, whatever you prefer…the result?

To keep the drivers and signs of poultry success or failure “top of mind” always.

Do this and you’ll find that you’re thinking more analytically, with deeper understanding of operational nuance and able to navigate critical poultry decision-making with greater confidence.

Jot down your poultry KPIs and keywords today.